Regarding Matt Jenkins’ otherwise excellent
article, “A crisis brews on the Colorado”: To talk about water
without discussion of population growth is a bit like planning a
wedding reception without knowing how many guests will be there
— doomed to failure (HCN, 1/24/05: A crisis brews on the
Colorado).
I am a firm believer in George
Santayana’s admonition that “those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.” In a recent article in
The Denver Post about the Fremont and other
prehistoric cultures in the Southwest, an archaeologist was quoted
as saying “something big,” or catastrophic, hit the region about
1,000 years ago. Some combination of burgeoning population, severe
drought and perhaps other circumstances brought major cultural
upheaval and death.
Severe drought may have triggered
Santa Fe’s bloody Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish and,
earlier, the collapse of the advanced Hohokam culture of Arizona.
So we face — based on historical precedent — the
likelihood of severe and prolonged drought.
Meanwhile,
the United States is the third-fastest growing nation, behind China
and India. Our 1 percent per annum growth rate represents doubling
times of 60 years or less. Seventy percent of our growth is driven
by immigration of upwards of 3 million people a year. How can any
credible discussion of water dodge discussion of such dynamic
forces unless we are simply so arrogant — or so in denial
— as to believe that what happened to previous cultures
simply cannot happen to our own?
Kathleene
Parker
Rio Rancho, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Drought + Population Growth = Disaster.
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